


Just Close Your Eyes

by Southbroom



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M, fluff!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17051183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Southbroom/pseuds/Southbroom
Summary: Its Daisy's wedding. Alex x Ellie in the distant future.





	Just Close Your Eyes

Hardy startled when he felt something touch his arm. It was Miller, curling her arm around his, watching the crowd ahead of them. He blink in bewildered at the warm expression on her face and more so that she was doing it in such close proximity to him.  
Miller, being her sunshine self.  
"This is so sweet." Miller observed, gesturing towards the dancefloor.  
"Yeah."  
"Just the decorations, the food. I was balling in the church when they looked at each other."  
"So I heard."  
"Oh." She sounded surprised, "Who was it who told you? Beth was sitting-"  
"I could hear you crying from where I sat."  
"It's not as if it I was that loud."  
"Oh, come on, Miller. I've known you long enough to know what your sniffles sound like." Hardy said, an attempt at some humour.  
He didn't want her to know that he had turned to look and see where she was sitting. He specifically asked the woman who did the seating arrangements to not place Miller next to him. This was because he knows that Miller dislikes showing any form of weakness in front of him. Over a decade of working together and everything was still a bit of a competition because "You stole my job".  
Miller turned her head to look him in the face. Her expression widened in disbelief, followed by a smack on his arm. Hardy's detective side spotted the flash of vulnerability in her eyes.  
"Knob." She muttered, tightening her grip on his bicep once more.  
He sighed.  
There was something nice about that, he decided. Miller not changing. His daughter changed all the time. Then she was cooking him some new Asian dish in the kitchen, then she listened to some new mind-numbing music, then she brought home the boy she wanted to marry.  
Not Miller. She stayed as feisty as always. Did you really say that the Brian? Knob. Are you really not coming to the pub tonight? Wanker.  
But maybe some things do. There was something in the way that Miller's arm snaked around his. Her fingers rested on his forearm, squeezing lightly. He contemplated the level of force she was touching him with and what it could potentially mean…  
All these years, Hardy, and you're still an optimistic man, he brooded. All these years by her side and he could not escape the hope that…  
Unconsciously, he had clenched his arm muscles. Miller, feeling his distress, let go of him and continued observing the party by his side.  
Horseshit! he cursed himself, trying his best to not look at Miller. That must have been the nicest Miller had been to him in years and he blew it!

x

Ellie was thinking of Daisy.  
How far she had come since that bitter sixteen-year-old that Hardy first dragged to Broadchurch. Coolness and indifference was now replaced with a kind of warmth, although it was not warmth exactly. The Hardy's were not particularly warm people. Ellie thought that Daisy represented the perfect combination of her parents: Hardy's fine sculpted features with Tess's mischievous eyes. Her father's good heart with her mother's sharp confidence.  
Daisy flashed a thumbs up over her new husband's shoulder. It was directed at Hardy, who responded with a laugh and returned gesture. She smiled back across the room.  
Ellie remembered how anxious he was in the beginning, trying desperately to impress his daughter, to once again win her love.  
It had worked.  
She doesn't remember exactly when she first saw the mended relationship between father and daughter, only that it was there.  
A memory popped into her head. Hardy coming to work late - was it going to snow!? - bearing the heavy news that Daisy had a boyfriend. With wide, sleepless eyes he explained who her first boyfriend was, desperate for her to fill in the blanks with her knowledge of all the people who lived in Broadchurch. Hardy had since become a lot less pedantic  
She remembered how relaxed he was there when he, Tom, Fred, Daisy and herself ate fish and chips by the pier to celebrate Tom's acceptance into uni a few years ago. He was leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head, listening to Fred and his latest antics.  
Then there was that time when he called her at 6 am on a Sunday in a panic, saying he needed new clothes.  
"I have to look decent at my daughter's wedding! Daisy's getting married!"  
"For God's sake! I'll come over after breakfast and we can sift through your closet." she snapped.  
When she arrived she was still upset with him breaking her weekend sleep, but he had made bacon as an apology. And looked at her with those wide brown eyes. She wasn't angry for long. They picked his best work suit and agreed to buy a new tie for the occasion later on. And then proceeded to have coffee on his patio, sitting in those ridiculous deck chairs and watching the sun rise over the ocean. She thinks about that morning more that she would admit to out loud.  
"Well I'm proud of you." Miller said.  
Hardy looked around the room, as if she was talking to someone else. When he clicked who she meant, he looked shell-shocked  
She thought of his courage, his perseverance, his obsessive moral code and how he managed to conquer all the demons in his life. She had witnessed him cheat death, regain his passions, and win over the light in his life: Daisy. Hardy was more than the grumpy bastard that everyone though he was. He was much more than that to her.  
"You're wearing a suit." She piped up.  
"I wear a suit every day, Miller."  
"Yeah, but not an ironed shirt."  
He dipped his chin to his chest, as if to check her observation. His hair flopped forward and Ellie bit back a laugh, shaking her head at the rush of affection she felt upon seeing it. He looked like such a teenager with that fringe.

x

"You look good too." He said, not quiet meeting her eyes, looking uneasy as he always did when the conversation turned too personal.  
"Thank you." She answered, sincerely.  
Miller did look beautiful, with her hair styled differently and the dress hugging her figure in all the right places. He wish he knew how to - do something. He had wished for years and years that he was less of an alien and he knew how to charm Miller like she so often charmed him.  
"I like that - colour." he said, cringing as he said it. Pathetic, Hardy, pathetic.  
"Well it's not orange but-"  
"Anything is better than bloody orange, Miller." He snapped, hating her for always making a joke out of everything.  
She laughed at the sternness of his expression. And then she looked so relaxed in the moment, so content, that Hardy put his rush of confidence to good use.  
"C'mon, Miller. Dance with me."  
"You dance?" she raised an eyebrow.  
"Terribly."  
"I'll take it." She said, pulling him onto the crowd, giggling all the way.

x

It wasn't terrible.

x

He was quiet the flimsy dancer, but then, she wasn't much better. There were three songs that they managed to dance to. Two of them were more modern music - things she had hear on the radio - but the last one was Toto's Africa.  
"This is such a wedding song."  
"Aye."  
"They played it at my wedding and my creepy uncle Robert danced with Lucy. She hated it. Can't stop thinking about him when I hear this song."  
"Mmm-hmm."  
His short reply was not uncharacteristic for Hardy. What was strange, was his reaction to her next observation.  
"You know, I really like that wine colour on Tess. Apparently Daisy's dressmaker also made her dress."  
"Urch, keep quiet, Miller."  
Throughout the songs he had kept his posture upright and rigid, but then he leaned in past her shoulder.  
She blinked.  
She could feel his chest making contact with hers as they moved, but was surprised by how he hand hesitantly clenched her waist.  
It was uncomfortable and out of place and so unexpected until it wasn't.  
Ellie was captivated by the sensation of his whiskers grazing against her ear.  
And yes, he still moved like a bit of a robot, lacking all the rhythm that Joe had but…  
He exhaled deeply, the air tickling her back. It was as if he was the same man that she spent so much time with, only that his features were magnified.  
She could not see his face but imagined he was closing his eyes, almost like he was salvaging the moment of dancing with her. Of being this close to her.  
But why would he do that? A part of her queried. A larger part of her answered immediately.  
Because he buys Kit-Kat when he can see you're stressed out.  
Because you are the one he asked as his plus-one to his daughter's wedding.  
Because see him ten hours a day and still want to go to his cottage for wine after work.  
Because you're Miller, and he's Hardy.  
So she closed her eyes and leaned into him too.

x

**Author's Note:**

> No idea where this fluffy one came from!  
> Title from the song "Close Your Eyes" by Silver Trees. The song is equally fluffy.


End file.
